As the Maoists hardened their stand on the release of a BJD MLA held captive by them,the Supreme Court today agreed to hear on an urgent basis a retired army officers plea to stop the state from conceding to their blackmail tactics. The release of jailed cadres in exchange for tribal MLA Jhina Hikaka would amount to nothing short of craven surrender,and create a sense of insecurity among soldiers who risked their lives to put them in prison,says the PIL filed by Major General (retired) Gagandeep Bakshi. It urges the apex court to restrain the Orissa government from agreeing to the conditions imposed by means of blackmail by the CPI (Maoist). A bench of Justices T S Thakur and Gyan Sudha Misra will hear the petition tomorrow. It has expressly sought the presence of a senior law officer for the hearing. Bakshi has made the Ministry of Home Affairs a party to the litigation,seeking a direction to frame proper law and guidelines to tackle the problem of Maoist insurgency. The PIL is also on a larger question of framing a policy to deal with Maoist insurgency. Whenever there is a hostage crisis,we have seen craven surrender from the governments side. There should be a standard operating procedure to deal with this crisis. Negotiations are the starting point,and generally used to buy time to trace the hostage and plan a rescue operation, the retired officer explained when contacted. Hikakas abduction had followed that of two Italians. The maoists had demanded the release of their cadre for freeing all three. In the present instance,the CPI (Maoist) have targeted civilian non-combatants to fulfill their rapacious demands. If their jailed comrades are released from jails on the basis of blackmail by these disruptive anti-social elements of society,this act of the state government will create insecurity in the minds of the people as well as scores of officers of the law enforcement agencies, the petition said. Though the Orissa CM agreed to release some Maoist cadres and their supporters,including 15 members of the pro-Maoist group Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangh,the rebels had disagreed,instead demanding the release of others,including hardcore commander Chenda Bhushanam alias Ghasi. Bakshi accuses Orissa of having evolved a noble method of releasing Maoists by granting them bail to avoid confrontation with the rebels. The bail application filed on behalf of the Maoists is not opposed by the public prosecutor. This is how the diktat of Maoists is being carried out by the state government,forgetting the law and rule of law, the petition says. Bakshi says such methods are bound to backfire. The CPI (Maoist) has a professed policy of indulging in a so-called Protracted Peoples War against the Indian government. Giving figures from the govenrments own records,the petition says: The Ministry of Home Affairs,on its website,reports that the Communist Party of India (Maoist) is the biggest Left Wing Extremist outfit in India. The statistics reveal that the Maoists have killed as many as 5,467 civilians during 2001 to 2011.
